Major Maintenance Project Complete at BP Refinery
(photo courtesy of our partners at The Times of Northwest Indiana)
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowOne of the largest maintenance projects in the history of the BP Whiting refinery is complete. Our partners at The Times of Northwest Indiana report the turnaround project was finished on budget and ahead of schedule with more than 1,500 union tradesmen working during the project’s peak.
The publication says contractors worked on the refinery’s 11C Pipestill unit, the gasoline hydrotreater, the Alkylation unit, the fluid coker unit and a vapor recovery unit. Workers also installed new safety instrumented systems, proactively cleaned the 12 Pipestill and made repairs to the Cat Feed Hydrotreating Unit.
"We concluded a major suite of planned turnaround activity and have returned to normal operations," BP Whiting Refinery Manager Don Porter said in an email to employees obtained by The Times. "This was one of Whiting’s largest turnarounds ever, in terms of hours performed. This was a significant and important undertaking for these units and the entire refinery."
The publication adds 1.5 million man hours without an injury that caused anyone to miss work were reported. Only one OHSA-reportable injury occurred.
"Throughout the turnaround, the remaining refinery units ran reliably and to plan, though at reduced overall throughput," said Porter. "We are now on track to continue to optimize our crude slate and deliver on the potential of our refinery as we resume running up to 430,000 barrels of crude per day."
In September, the BP PLC (NYSE: BP) approved construction of a new hydrotreater, which it says will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and create hundreds of construction jobs.